Compassion in Alternative Care: A Conceptualisation of Tibetan Buddhist Ethical Orientation Within Institutional Child Welfare in Nepal

Abstract

This article examines compassion as a relational institutional ethos within alternative residential child care in Nepal. Drawing on qualitative case study research conducted in a children’s home operating in collaboration with local and international non-governmental organisations, the study explores how Tibetan Buddhist ethical principles intersect with contemporary safeguarding and governance frameworks. Situated within debates concerning institutionalisation, deficit-oriented child welfare paradigms, and humanitarian governance, the article employs Arts-Based Engagement Ethnography within a constructivist research paradigm. Compassion is conceptualised not as a therapeutic intervention nor as an internalised psychological trait, but as a patterned relational attentiveness enacted in everyday institutional micro-practices. Findings suggest that compassion may mediate peer mentoring structures, communal routines, and reflective approaches to behavioural regulation without displacing regulatory compliance. Rather than advancing causal claims regarding psychosocial outcomes, the study offers a theoretically grounded and methodologically transparent account of how culturally embedded ethical traditions may shape the enactment of governance within South Asian residential care contexts.

Keywords

Alternative care residential child welfare compassion Tibetan Buddhist ethics humanitarian governance qualitative research

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